The principal of Marumofase Primary School near Lenyenye, outside Tzaneen in Limpopo, fears for the future of his pupils after 13 teachers threatened to leave the school for other accessible schools.

George Ramodike said the teachers had been frequently forced to stay away from school during rainy days because the school is not accessible due to the bad road conditions.

He said the teachers had been forced to park their cars more than a kilometre away from the school on rainy days. This made them arrive late at school and sometimes up to 400 pupils were left stranded.

Ramodike said they had approached the local councillor about the problem "but it seems the matter is not taken seriously".

He said he had also appealed to the Greater Tzaneen municipality to tar or pave the road to make it easy for the teachers.

The problem had been going on for years, Ramodike said, and only those teachers driving bakkies were able to reach the school in their vehicles. "The problem is that if cars are left far from the school, they become vulnerable to thieves - who usually break into them and steal ," said Ramodike.

He said several cases of theft from motor vehicles had been reported, and teachers had lost thousands of rands to replace their stolen belongings.

"Last year, the 13 teachers at the school contributed R100 each to get a grader from a private contractor to level the road.

"But that proved only temporary because the road was again washed away during the recent rains," he added.

Meanwhile, acting Tzaneen municipal spokesperson Raymond Maake said there were plans in place to tar the road in the coming financial year.

Maake said there was an amount of R800000 from the municipal infrastructure grant that was initially allocated to tar the road "but the money was later withdrawn". He said they were now in the process of appointing a new contractor.